Kolkata Knight Riders teammates celebrated their victory after they won the DLF IPL Twenty20 Champions Trophy in a final match against Chennai Super Kings.

Kolkata Knight Riders, underachievers in the Indian Premier League’s first four seasons, finally shook off the shackles and won the T20 cricket tournament on Sunday, beating reigning champions Chennai Super Kings in yet another tight match.

In addition to the trophy and winner’s payout, the team can expect a hero’s welcome when it returns from Chennai to West Bengal. The state’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, has announced there will be a party to celebrate the victory, though the winning team probably shouldn’t expect too much.

“We are a poor state, what can we give them? We can only give them love,” a smiling Ms. Banerjee said during a televised press conference.

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It’s a peculiarity of the IPL that a five-year-old team that has changed personnel so many times – most notably in 2011 when Delhi man Gautam Gambhir replaced local superstar Sourav Ganguly as captain — can be such a strong source of regional pride.

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Co-owner of the Kolkata Knight Riders, Shah Rukh Khan, kissed the trophy as he celebrated the team’s victory.

How much does Ms. Banerjee’s oft-hailed common man really have “in common” with a group of millionaire cricketers who mostly have very little shared history with Kolkata and West Bengal. And an IPL-winning team is hardly going to drive down train fares and petrol prices. But expect plenty of politicians – never a breed to shy away from bandwagon-jumping – to be at the party, shaking hands with players and mugging in front of the cameras with that ubiquitous exhibitionist Shah Rukh Khan.

Tough as this is to say, Mr. Khan – the most prominent of IPL franchise owners – deserves credit. Not necessarily for his tête-à-tête with security at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, but more for his part in the very tough decision of signing Gambhir for a record $2.4 million at auction last year and sending Ganguly out to pasture.

The decision to let Ganguly go was met with uproar by many people in Kolkata, with calls for the team’s fans to march in protest, as well as boycott Mr. Khan’s movies. And an article on India Real Time last year entitled “Kolkata Was Right to Drop Ganguly” provoked a torrent of venomous comments, but it was the correct choice to go with Gambhir.

Ganguly had a couple of bright moments for Pune Warriors this IPL, but Kolkata Knight Riders didn’t miss him at all. The franchise has done better without him, under the stewardship of Gambhir, who has been quite magnificent this season and justified the record price paid for him.

With Gambhir at the helm, Kolkata Knight Riders made it into the final four for the first time last year, and now he has guided the team to its first IPL championship. The results don’t lie.

And Kolkata Knight Riders deserved to win IPL5. Though Chennai Super Kings put up a valiant fight in Sunday’s final, losing in the final over of the match, the 2010 and 2011 champions didn’t set the tournament alight this year. The only other team to really match Kolkata’s achievements in 2012 was the Delhi Daredevils, but the group stage table-toppers faded badly at crunch time, surrendering meekly to Chennai Super Kings in the play-off for the final last Friday.

All in all, it’s been an exciting IPL. The tournament suffered last year because it started within days of India’s World Cup win. This year, it came as the national team’s fortunes were on somewhat of a slide, but cricket fans flocked to the stadiums to see superstars slog it out in the heat, with many matches going down to the wire. Old stars like Chris Gayle (733 runs, 59 sixes) and Virender Sehwag were typically magnificent with the bat, and Morne Morkel and Lasith Malinga excelled again with the ball. There was some outrageously good fielding, too, while youngsters like Sunil Narine and Ajinkya Rahane became true IPL superstars. What’s not to like?

Well, at close to two months, the IPL is still too long. It’s also been dogged by some controversy this year. But the headlines about players at raves and owners in light brawls were mostly storms in teacups. The dust will surely settle and these often media-generated scandals will be forgotten as attentions turn elsewhere.

This year was seen as a test for the IPL. It passed, not necessarily with flying colors, but with ease.

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India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.